A/d Converter ?'s

[CUSETOWN]

I have a 16trk adat setup and wanted some advice. I'm not ready to take the dive into recording on my computer.. I guess because I've NEVER owned a dependable computer..

Anyway, I've been looking at converters for a front end to my adats.. & I was wondering just how much of a difference this would make in my sound. I have the original blackface adats.. I've always thought the sounds was ok, but I've read sooo much about the importance of converters, I think it might be a good investment.

2ndly, The bang for buck leader in my research is the midiman flying cow. Its under $300 & seems fine for my needs.. Anyone have any experience with this unit?

All feedback is appreciated.
Thanks!

[chessrock]

You could probably do a lot better if you're not afraid to hunt around on ebay and go with something used.


Mytek, Symetrix 620, even Apogee have some older 18-20 bit ones that can be had very reasonably if you scour the ebay scene.

[mixsit]

I fed an RME ADI-8 24 bit into my Fostex CX-8 (which is 16 bit 2nd gen converters I believe) once. The combo worked fine. It's chopping off the lower eight bits, but it did drop the noise floor. (Not to say that at 16 bit that's a big issue. This was poking around at ridiculously low record levels.)
You might want to try out some converters to see if you like them.
Wayne

[jake-owa]

CUSETOWN, in the future it would be nice if you would ask a question once in one forum. It is kind of irritating to answer a question only to see it answered in another forum. Cross-posting is really frowned upon here.

Thanks.

[Blue Bear Sound]

I currently have a huge hard-on for Lucid's AD9624 - but it may be out of your price range....

[Michael Jones]

Originally posted by Blue Bear Sound
I currently have a huge hard-on for Lucid's AD9624 - but it may be out of your price range....

Really?
You prefer those over anything by Apogee, Steinberg or RME?
Or, I guess, more appropriately, what have you used before that you can compare them to?
I currently use Steinberg's AD/DA converters, and I'm pretty happy with them, but I need to make the jump to 96k.

The new Apogee AD16 and DA16 has caught my eye and I've heard them on a mix I did.

[Blue Bear Sound]

My only comparison is the stock A/Ds on the Alesis gear.... so it may very well be that the Apogee's are better...

I doubt the RME is better though... but I haven't compared directly - I use an RME Hammerfall, but it doesn't have A/D....

[Michael Jones]

Thanks for the response Blue.

The Lucid's look real nice, and at around $1600 for a pair of A/D - D/A, you'd expect them to be TOL.

Are these the ones your using?
http://store4.yimg.com/I/mercenary-audio_1742_5961404

[Blue Bear Sound]

That's them... they came highly recommended by Sjoko - and from experience I have good reason to trust his ears & opinions!

[Fletcher]

Originally posted by Michael Jones
You prefer those over anything by Apogee, Steinberg or RME?

From what I understand, the Steinberg stuff is repackaged RME stuff... which I didn't think sounded nearly as musical as the Apogee stuff... and I've found that the Lucid stuff sounds more musical to me than the Apogee stuff... but YMMV.

[Michael Jones]

Originally posted by Fletcher
From what I understand, the Steinberg stuff is repackaged RME stuff... which I didn't think sounded nearly as musical as the Apogee stuff... and I've found that the Lucid stuff sounds more musical to me than the Apogee stuff... but YMMV.

Thanks Fletcher. I appreciate the input.
I noticed you have the Apogee AD 16 and DA 16 for sale, but you mention that something has to be done to use all 16 channels. Could you elaborate or point me in the direction of one of your tech's that can?

[sweetnubs]

the lucid's are pretty decent sounding converter's and I have ab'd them with my older 20 bit apogees and I prefer the lucids. I use prism converters also which sound excellent but are probably out of your budget. Another good choice is the eight channel panasonic converters which also sound pretty decent. I beleive they are roughly the same converters used on their DAT machines which actually aren't too bad. I think they are now discontinued so you can probably pick them up for fairly cheap. definate improvement over stock adat converters.

[TexRoadkill]

Once you get into the high end convertor market it makes the Radar look like a good buy. When I was pricing convertors for a full 24ch analog mix system the cost was going to be outrageous.

With the Radar Nyquist I have 12 channels i/o @ 96khz or 24 ch @ 48khz for $8000. You could only get 10 channels of Lucid for that much and with the Radar you also get a HDR system.

I haven't compared the two so maybe the Lucid is superior but I doubt it could be that much better than the Radar Nyquists.

[Simmons]

I've been looking at the Lucid 9624 A/D converter as a possible upgrade to an Audiophile 2496 soundcard. It's a great sounding inexpensive soundcard. How much difference can really be heard between the two? Are we talking about barely audible differences or is it really that pronounced?

[Blue Bear Sound]

To MY ears... the difference is night and day between the converters on the Alesis Masterlink and the Lucids....

I also have the Audiophile card (for monitoring purposes only) and since the Audiophile card doesn't even come close to the Masterlink for sound quality, it goes without saying the Lucid's are far better.

[Simmons]

you gotta love those first hand experiences. thanks blue bear.

[Blue Bear Sound]

One other note about hearing the difference between converters..... you also have to have a signal chain that will ALLOW you to hear the difference!!!

[SPINSTERWUN]

Originally posted by Blue Bear Sound
One other note about hearing the difference between converters..... you also have to have a signal chain that will ALLOW you to hear the difference!!!

I TOTALLY agree with Bruce!

spin

[SPINSTERWUN]

I am an APOGEE adict also....

This is the unit I possess.

http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/prod_ad16.html

But @ $2,600.00 USD , this might be out of your price range.

spin